12 or 20 (second series) questions with Fawn Parker

Fawn Parker is the author of Set-Point (ARP, 2019), Jolie Laide (Palimpsest, 2021), and Dumbshow (ARP, 2021). She is co-founder of BAD NUDES Magazine and The Parker Agency.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I felt when I was young that publishing a book was an impossible and necessary thing. When I got my first book contract, I felt a sense of peace, like I could finally relax and take a look around, and see where I wanted to go next.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I first wrote poetry in childhood, around 9 or 10, and posted it on those old writing forums where users would critique each other. My mom got upset because the other writers assumed I was an adult and told me I was talentless, but I loved it and felt that bad reviews were the best way to become a better writer.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

It is very quick for me, especially prose. I write a draft as fast as I can, and then I send it out too early and nobody likes it. My final drafts are always a whole different book. My notes always come later, when I'm trying to refine something.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

A poem begins with a line or an image, usually something that sounds like it would be in a poem. Often I will see something and imagine Frank O'Hara would probably have written about it, so I try to do that. Or, if I've most recently read something less observational, like I was really interested in Sharon Olds earlier this year, I found her tone stuck with me and I was having more "Sharon Olds" style ideas.

With fiction I tend to imagine a scene that feels powerful to me and then build a book around it. For example my most recent manuscript is about a senile writer who watches old interviews with himself and tries to re-learn his own personality. I imagined an older man watching himself on an iPad, repeating his lines, and that is where the book began.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Readings don't feel connected to the creative process for me. They're something I like to do because I like to see my friends and it also all feels sort of necessary. I used to like to host events and be up on stage more but now I find I am liable to act embarrassing.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

This is the same question I am trying to answer in my PhD applications right now and really I don't know. I am interested in women, always, and mental illness. What I like to do with fiction is offer a perspective, and I like to be realistic in a jarring way. It's what I like to read too—when something is described in a surprising new way and I think, "that is how that is."

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think the role of the writer changes depending on the writer. It is a good way of recording a more creative (and honest) version of history sometimes. Reading helps us empathize too. And I think using language in new ways keeps it alive.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

It feels good in its professionality. Usually if I am working with an editor it is because I have a contract already or I'm working on an academic thesis, etc., and those things feel productive so I enjoy them. However the work itself is hard for me and I don't enjoy it the way I enjoy writing a first draft alone in my office.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

My dad who was a banker and a tax lawyer always says, "If you're not making money you're losing money." I think about my productivity that way, which is unhealthy maybe.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

What makes it easy for me is I've never considered myself a poet, so writing poetry is low stakes. However I've always done it, even when I've consciously decided to take a break from all writing. A line or a stanza will just happen in my head. With fiction I more often sit down and think, "it's time to write fiction."

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

If I'm writing or reworking a novel with a deadline, which I'm doing now, I write a list of every scene in the book in my notebook. Then I count how many scenes I have to work on per day to finish by the deadline, and divide them up. Right now for example I'm reworking three scenes per day, every day until the end of August. I wake up early and drink 3 or 4 cups of coffee while I work, then stop around lunch time. If I'm interrupted, sometimes I'll work again at night with a glass of wine.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I read/watch interviews with writers about their work or read a book. If I am really stuck I feel depressed for a little while and eventually it resolves itself.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Patchouli reminds me of my dad, and I inherited my mom's perfume when she passed away so that reminds me of her.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I have always been a bad reader. I used to be really proud of the fact that I never read a single book assigned to me in high school or in my bachelors degree, which really is not an impressive example of my character. I think because I read so little in my formative years my writing is mostly influenced by my real life experiences, and a little bit by things like music and TV.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Reading some of Richard Brautigan's novels was a big part of what made me feel excited about writing when I was a teenager. And Donald Barthelme. In my adult life I think a lot about Amy Hempel and Gail Scott when I am deciding what is important in a book, and what it should do.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would like to write a long poem.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Before my BA I was in school training to be an American Sign Language interpreter. That's what I wanted to do all through my teens and I imagine I will go back and get my certification one day unless I get some giant film deal or sell a million copies of a novel.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Growing up I always felt like the "dumb one" in my family of academics, so being creative was always an important part of my identity. I also was a really shy kid so writing was a way of expressing myself.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Maybe it doesn't count because I'm not finished yet but I'm reading Bubblegum by Adam Levin and it's great. A couple months ago I watched Good Time, the Safdie Brothers film.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I'm working on my masters thesis and editing a novel that'll be out with ARP Books next fall. It's a campus novel based on Shakespeare's Henriad, set in contemporary Toronto.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Angela Carr, Without Ceremony

 

Going through the Motions

Tendons come unstuck.
Poem titles float downriver or are already
within reach. Some have been plucked,
masticated, swallowed. The best
are in our pockets.
Discrete but perfect, they do not let us down.
Don’t spend all your titles at once.
I misspell park the French way,
disobliged the tremendous finality of k.
There are traces of sweetness in this aroma
though it is nearly depleted.
The modesty of c. Avenue due park is so ordinary.
We were practical and purposeful.
We bought lunch in a deli and sat on a bench,
even sunshine a spectacular sight.

Poet and translator Angela Carr, a Canadian expat currently living in New York City, has just released Without Ceremony (Toronto ON: Book*hug, 2020), a fourth full-length title after her poetry collections Here in There (BookThug, 2014) [see my review of such here], The Rose Concordance (BookThug, 2009) [see my review of such here] and Ropewalk (Montreal QC: Snare Books, 2006). Carr’s poems in this new collection have such a sense of being composed across great distances, written across large canvases and stretched out as far as possible. They might hold to small moments and points, but are, one might say, bigger on the inside. Her poems, from point to point, are able to cover vast and incredible distances. As the duelling couplets of the first section of the opening poem, “Direction of Fight,” begin: “At the fish market in Union Square we choose flounder filleted / and decline the oyster. // From an elderly farmer who looks like your grandfather, / we buy six narcissi: his only product. // They’re a pale buttery yellow, flecked with old-fashioned Monarch orange, / a colour scheme from your grandmother’s breakfast nook, a scene that vanished in the twentieth // century, as quickly as this perfume is subtle, yet the aroma does not know how to fill the subway car.” As part of an interview posted at Toronto Quarterly on June 23, 2014, she responds that what is next for her includes, quite simply, “Longer sentences.” and this collection might just be the result of that deceptively-simple answer. Her sentences don’t merely extend as far as length, but in breadth, running a line through and beyond her couplets, sentences and poems to connect, one to the other. “A metal-framed mirror and a human figurine,” she writes, to close the poem “Quiver,” “a wooden horse with broken legs, hard words and / weathered words, warm and worn, the future tense and its finely detailed designs we pull over / ourselves at night for comfort.”

Practice before Theory

But one night the door will open and we’ll lean into the empty
room where footprints in the dust are impermanent
and prosaic. Idle ink stains on the walls,
a stack of Juicy Fruit on a bookshelf,
shiny balled wrappers, all signs in a mercurial
syntax that evaporates on exposure.
when we are seen as lesbian
they’re uncertain which letters have fallen from the tree
and which are bruised, what makes the end of a given word feminine.
the words come to touch us deeply but we keep
them at a distance, sentimental and burning.
A lemon is squeezed
in a country they will never visit
and only fleetingly exists. As you know,
the book does not begin in the liquid state;
just like civility, taste is strongest
when two grounds are opposing
and streams roar, fervent.

There is something of the evocation in these poems, and some lovely flourish. The poem “Catalogue of Disasters,” for example, speaks with a delightful wave of the hand, as it begins: “I was named after the divine messenger, Angelus domini. // They motioned to flick the air above my head and heard a hollow pinging sound / as their fingers struck my invisible halo.”

 

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Joakim Norling on Timglaset Editions

Timglaset Editions is a Swedish publisher of visual and concrete poetry, asemic writing and other forms of expression where writing and visual art intersect. We publish trade books, chapbooks, zines and booklike objects that sometimes may be categorized as artists’ books. Our roots are in the diy culture of the post-punk era and our publications are often partly handmade in limited editions. We strive to make out of print titles available as free pdf downloads in order to keep the work in circulation. Since we started book publishing in 2015 we have published more than 40 works by Hartmut Abendschein, Derek Beaulieu, Petra Schulze-Wollgast, Dona Mayoora, Gregory Betts, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Lina Nordenström, Fernando Aguiar, Catherine Vidler and many more. In December we will publish TERES by Klaus Peter Dencker in cooperation with the University of Kiel.

1 – When did Timglaset first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?

Timglaset started out as a fanzine somewhere around 2011 I guess. I had no real set idea, except that I wanted it to be about the kind of weird art and literature I like. I had been writing about music for many years in fanzines and on blogs and finally got completely fed up with it. Through the zine I started to get in touch with all kinds of amazing people and while working on the early issues my interest in visual poetry exploded. In 2014 I published the first book, an elaborate, partly handmade booklet of Robin Tomens’ collage work and before soon I was a book publisher rather than a zine publisher. One person that has to be mentioned as instrumental in Timglaset’s development into a visual poetry press is Derek Beaulieu. He took an interest very early on and generously provided help and encouragement when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

I published my first fanzine (about music) when I was in my teens. Where did that urge come from? Well, both my parents were journalists, so that might have had something to do with it. Writing, printing and publishing was almost as natural as breathing and eating.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

The role of small press has to be to be daring and at the forefront of the chosen field of publishing. I can’t see the point of a small press which will publish the same things as commercial or academic presses. Personally I have a love of the chapbook, of ideas and concepts, even if they are not fit for a full length book; of the unfinished, of the footnote and the small print. But above all of course a love of that strange hybrid form which is visual poetry.

The question of responsibilities is a really tough one that I struggle with. On the one hand, small press involves lots of unpaid work which means it has to be driven by passion and a love of the work published. I don’t think that small press can be expected to have the same kind of responsibilities regarding representation as commercial presses. On the other hand, if you’re an even slightly political person these issues will be high on your agenda anyway.

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

It would be presumptuous of me to imagine that Timglaset is in any way unique but one thing is that I have a consciously internationalist focus. I want to publish visual writers from all over the world and am sometimes pained by the fact that I don’t speak any other languages than English well enough to communicate with authors. Also, perhaps too obvious, that I am completely focused on visual writing or other forms of expression which involve both language and a visual perspective. Of course other presses publish visual poetry too, but perhaps not solely.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new books out into the world?

Well, Timglaset would never exist without social media. That’s the short answer. Newsletters are helpful too.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

Since I only publish visual work my editing will not involve anything deeper than suggestions like: maybe remove that piece or maybe add a couple of pieces. I will rather say no to a manuscript if it has merits but needs a lot of work. I’m very production oriented. If I had the time to publish a book a week I would be happy. I’m often frustrated by how slow it can be sometimes.

7 – How do your titles get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

At least 90% of the books are sold online. I also enjoy book fairs a lot, not least because I get to meet customers and get acquainted with new authors. There are a few - very few -  bookshops that regularly stock Timglaset titles. The normal print run is 100 copies. I just keep one for my archive so it usually says 99 in the book.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?

It’s just me. I would love to have a co-editor but as far as I know there isn’t even anyone else in Malmö, Sweden who has the kind of love for visual poetry that I have.

The TYPEWRITTEN imprint, run jointly by Petra Schulze-Wollgast in Rostock, Germany and myself, is edited and printed by her. I finance it and distribute it. So that’s not really co-editing more like a collaborative agreement.

9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

I’m not a visual writer myself. As I mentioned, Timglaset started as a fanzine, and my perspective is to a high degree still that of a fan.

10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?

The question is obviously not relevant for Timglaset but if you're the editor and you know you have a great idea for a book, by all means publish it! I don’t think authors should be afraid of self-publishing. There are numerous examples of great authors who self-published.

11– How do you see Timglaset evolving?

This year I have published more full length books than before, for the simple reason that there are some excellent visual poets out there whose work deserves a broader presentation. For the future I hope to publish both full length books, chapbooks and other formats, whatever fits the work best. I try not to make plans far into the future and try to let the work I want to publish guide the publishing process.

12 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?

When I started out I knew next to nothing about book design but I think most Timglaset books have turned out rather well, if I may say so myself. I’m not sure if this is something that has been overlooked but I do find design an important factor in publishing. Visual poetry comes in all sizes and shapes and it’s important to me to do the work justice and find a design solution that presents it in the best possible manner.

My biggest frustration is that I have to work for a living too. I wish I had the time, energy and money to do this full time.

13 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

To a high degree I was improvising. However, I came in contact with the Canadian chapbook scene early on and was impressed by the variety and quality of the publications. Small press was always more interesting than any major publisher. I should also mention Tom Jenks' zimZalla. Always inventive, always eager to try something which hasn't been tried before. Immediately when I came in contact with zimZalla I knew I wanted Timglaset to have the same openness to different formats and ideas.

14 – How does Timglaset work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Timglaset in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

The importance of conversations with other presses can’t be overestimated. There’s always a surge of excitement when I receive chapbooks, booklets and collections from Simulacrum Press, Penteract Press, No Press, Puddles of Sky, Viktlösheten, Rebecca Resinski, psw, and many others. I hope to think we inspire each other to be better and to try out new things.

15 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

I would love to hold more launches but since most of the authors I publish live far from Malmö it is more often than not impossible. Also good intentions have a habit of falling through. I was supposed to be in Basel, Switzerland at a book fair and launch Hartmut Abendschein’s ‘Asemic Walks’ there but the pandemic got worse again and the flight was cancelled.

16 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

The internet is absolutely essential to the relative success of Timglaset. There is almost no interest at all for visual poetry in Sweden but thanks to social media I can reach an international audience. The weird Swedish postage tariffs are also immensely helpful. The cost for sending a book to Canada or Australia is the same as sending it across the bridge to Copenhagen (30 minutes by train or car).

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

I wish I had time to handle submissions in a professional way but as it is, it takes too much time which I need for all the other work that comes with running a small press.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

Language Lines & Poetry is the second book of vispo/asemic by the immensely gifted Dona Mayoora. It takes the constructionist elements of her first Timglaset book, ‘Listening to Red’, one step further, exploring lines, geometrical shapes and structures, using the pen as if El Lissitzky was an asemic writer.

Sacha Archer’s Mother’s Milk is a powerful book of rubber stamped visual poems, full of writhing, slithering shapes, borne out of creative necessity and exhaustion, inky fingers, inky soul.

Asemic Walks: 50 Templates for Pataphysical Inspections by Hartmut Abendschein provides the maps (50 of them) but not the destinations. Printed on translucent paper these maps can be laid on top of any other map, introducing unknown paths and sights in the landscape.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

Heather Sweeney, Dear Marshall, Language Is Our Only Wilderness

Interlude: I am not on the syllabus. I am not from the hills or the vast ocean. I am peeling birch. I had gymnastics lessons. For a time. I was not hungry. The sun paraded for three months. I cannot tell you how much I love or do not love. I am things you cannot measure. I am not domestic. I ran track and was average. I always knew I would move somewhere far away. If I feel hemmed in I will retaliate. This is something to depend on.

Dear Marshall,
I went to Target today to buy a black mini skirt and had a feeling someone was following me. I calmed myself down, accusing my imagination. As I was paying I turned around and the guy was right behind me. Buying air fresheners. I remembered those boxing moves you taught me. My thoughts pinned under there. This is my world now. I imagine the sun rising across your voice. Across the flavored air. Are you at home now? At least that is something we could share.

I’ve been going through San Diego poet Heather Sweeney’s new full-length poetry title, Dear Marshall, Language Is Our Only Wilderness (Brooklyn NY: Spuyten Duyvil, 2020), following a handful of chapbooks (including one from above/ground press) as well as the full-length Call Me California (Finishing Line Press, 2020), a book published almost simultaneously alongside this one (although I have yet to see a copy). Dear Marshall is constructed as a book-length lyric suite of prose poems that employ elements of the first-person journal entry against that of the letter-poem, offering observation, memory, introspection and an immediacy that brings one right into the action of her sentences. She writes of violence, love, family and loss, a childhood of rebellion and survival, a flurry of impulse, heartbreak and outcomes deeply-felt. “My feet are unusually narrow. I can run a long distance at a slow pace. I / have had past-life visions. In one I am hunting a boar in a dense jungle. / In another I am running with a baby in one arm wrapped in a brown / blanket. We are close to death. In a field of ice. In the long neck of a / dream.” The poems run from direct statement and stories retold into abstract, lyric layerings, and is structured as a curious kind of call-and-response, as every page an opening call paired with a response directly to “Marshall.” Who is Marshall? Given the rhetorical aspect of the letter-poem, it might not be as important who Marshall is or was, but what and how she writes to him.

Dear Marshall,
You were always my witness. You never stopped me from myself. What does survival mean? A hand hidden. Under my coat. Despite my effort. Being chased by your mom’s boyfriend with a broken beer bottle. Here, an abstraction. A hand that became a root piercing our shadow. When that fucker fell to the floor I swore I heard his tooth crack. And I laughed until I convulsed. When was the last time we. I invite you to touch my convulsion. My small empire of words. The bitch in me is this shattered frame. One day your eyes are blue and then another. Meet me in the hotel lobby tomorrow. I will be waiting. (Leopard coat, sunglasses.)

Sweeney’s poems are first-person declarations that attempt to place herself, to centre herself in a collage of experience, situations and potential chaos, shaping the chaos into a particular kind of order. “I am a sentence made of two icy twigs. Of splintered afterthought. I’m / at the airport again. The wall of windows, a stanza.” She weaves in a collage of pilfered lines, lived experiences, questions and observations into a coherent line, working a shape of the world in which she exists. This book-length poem, this book-length suite of poems, read as a journal of accumulated sentences shaped as a way to write one’s way into being, into becoming; to write through and beyond the unsettled past and present into a less uncertain future.

There is a bee on my wrist. I am drinking almond milk chai. I know almond consumption is contributing to the drought in California, but I always forget. A bird hit my window this morning. My wingspan is five feet. I am good in an emergency. I am at a literary festival listening to a panel about the Middle East. Sometimes I feel dumb when it comes to politics. American culture, unraveling, worry beads, migration, Armenia, minorities, U2, strands, the tribe, millet, secular. I am losing ground. My attention span. I like to think of myself as a container. I will always go for broke. A broken modernity. I like CBS Sunday morning. I don’t like to think about what progress means. I don’t want to know what a century feels like.

Dear Marshall,
In Venice I thought of you, then also in terrible Germany. I wish we could meet in San Francisco at the MOMA again and talk about the books that make us cry. I told you. What do I deserve at this point? Can we go to Chinatown and shut that shit down then go to a strip club talking about the life we wanted? I wish you were. I cannot settle. Can we go to a café like normal people? I do not want to hurt us further but we are too open, too much of a pause, to ignore.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jaime Fountaine

Jaime Fountaine was raised by “wolves.” She is the author of Manhunt (Mason Jar Press, 2019). She lives in Philadelphia

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

To date, I have only written one book. Finishing something feels way better than giving up and deleting it, but it also requires significantly more effort. 

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I was a lonely, imaginative child, who spent most of her time reading.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

Most of the time, I’m writing despite myself, rather than as some well-thought out routine. I spend more time in my head than I do on paper. Sometimes that means that after a long time considering an idea, I can bang out a pretty solid draft in a day. Other times, that means I write four sentences a month and never finish a story.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Usually, a concept or a line or a voice will make its way into my head, and I’ll sit with it for as long as it takes to build a story around it, or give up.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I’ve been running reading series on and off since I was 23 (I’m 35 now), and they’ve made me a better writer, a better community member, and I think a better friend. I’m perhaps too comfortable speaking in public, but using that impulse to support work I’m interested in, and to see how a voice or an idea actually lands has been invaluable to me.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I like to say that, since it’s out in the hands of readers, it’s up to them to decide what my work means, which is both technically true, and a great way to let myself off the hook.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I have no idea! I tend to avoid making sweeping, generalized statements that I will probably regret saying in twenty minutes. I shouldn’t be a spokesperson for anything but my friends and Tide Pens. I get a lot of use out of Tide Pens.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I had an incredible experience with my editors at Mason Jar. They paid an incredible amount of attention to my novella while working on two others simultaneously, and the book is so much better for it. I’d never worked so closely or extensively with editors before.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

My friend Lorraine once told me that procrastination is basically a way to insulate yourself against perfectionism.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to an advice column)? What do you see as the appeal?

Most of my non-fiction writing (advice column, interviews, a couple of essays) are so much in my own, ridiculous voice that it’s technically easier than developing an authentic voice for a character and keeping it consistent over many pages. It’s not difficult to be a goofy, public version of myself, so doling out advice is much easier than being publicly honest about my feelings, which I don’t enjoy one bit. I’ve done it, and I’ll probably do it again, but it’s much harder for me than writing fiction is.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I have no set routine for writing. When I’m in the middle of a project, more of the work is done in my head than on the screen/paper. When I’m not writing, I’m just not writing. I hate journaling, I hate staring at a blank screen, I hate generative exercises. And unless I owe somebody something, I just let myself be a brat about it, because I always come back to writing on my own.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I’m much better at figuring out these kinds of problems with my passive brain, so I usually cook when I’m stuck on something writing related. The chopping and kneading soothe me, and give me a creative endeavor with a positive outcome (most of the time, at least) that I can focus on instead of thinking about the problems I’m having with a particular narrative.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Garlic.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I saw Twin Peaks in kindergarten, and it imprinted on me in a very big way. Watching it as an adult felt a lot like going home. I tend to think about my writing in terms of what things feel like for the characters, rather than how it should look for an audience, and finding a way to translate that has been very informed by the work of David Lynch.

There are a lot of songwriters who are very good at building entire worlds between words. Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and the late David Berman are particular favorites of mine.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I don’t think I could’ve written Manhunt if I hadn’t read Steven Dunn’s Potted Meat or if I didn’t read Bud Smith’s essays about writing on his phone at work.

I am almost always reading, and I don’t really know how to quantify the importance that has on my work. There are so many great stories and books and essays that have made me a better writer, and there’s also a bunch of mediocre shit that’s done the same. I’m terrible at making lists because I always leave something off.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I haven’t traveled much. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, unfortunately.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I very much have a day job, as an administrative and outreach coordinator at a public health research institution. I send a lot of emails.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I wasn’t good at other stuff? I can’t paint or draw or play an instrument and I have very limited patience for crafts.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Recently, I’ve loved Little Eyes by Samanta Schweiblin, Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, and Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frasier. I’m also extremely into Samantha Irby’s “Who’s on Judge Mathis Today” newsletter, which gives me something to live for every day.

I’ve been terrible at watching movies or TV of any real substance. I was once a real asshole about film, but now I’m just a tired bitch who rewatched Hot Rod for the fifth time last week.

20 - What are you currently working on?

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12 or 20 (second series) questions;